Hands Off Russia
The Hands Off Russia was a campaign founded by British Socialists in 1919 to organise opposition to the British intervention on the side of the White armies in the Russian Civil War. The National Committee for the Hands off Russia Movement was elected at a conference in London in January 1919. Socialists like William Paul, P. Coates (national secretary), Harry Pollitt (national organiser) and Alfred Comrie were active in the campaign.[1] In 1918 East London dockers had refused to load the Jolly George with arms headed for Russia.[2]
In 1919, William Paul published Hands off Russia which claimed:
The imperialist Powers know that the very essence of Socialism is its international policy of a World Republic of Labour. They realise that the triumph of Socialism in Russia is but the first step towards the triumph of Socialism internationally. Hence their united designs and attacks to crush the Bolsheviks in order to prevent the spread and triumph of revolutionary Socialism in other countries. ...
The sheer savagery of these [White Russian] usurpers has only had the effect of driving honest moderate socialists and non-Bolshevik elements into the camp of Lenin and Trotsky.[3]
Sylvia Pankhurst reported in August 1919 that:
For months past "Hands Off Russia" has found its way into the resolution of every labor and Socialist propaganda meeting and literature about Russia has been the more eagerly read than any other.[4]
Many of those who were active in the Hands off Russia Campaign would go on to found the Communist Party of Great Britain.
References
- ↑ Katsman, G. V. (3rd Edition (1970-1979).). The Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Moscow & London: Macmillan. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ TUC History Online. "1918-1939". Timeline. Trades Union Congress. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
- ↑ Paul, William (1919). Hands off Russia!. Renfrew: Socialist Labour Press. pp. 13, 16.
- ↑ Pankhurst, Sylvia (9 August 1919). "The British Workers and Soviet Russia". The Revolutionary Age.
